Historically, the electrical grid of each country has been a ‘broadcast’ grid, where a few central power generators (i.e. power stations) provide all the electricity production in a country or region and then distribute this electricity to the end users via a large network of cables and transformers. This model has worked well but there is a growing need to reform electrical grids, for a variety of reasons. As a result, national governments and relevant stakeholders are making significant efforts in the development of future electrical grids or ‘Smart Grids’. Development of such new grids will require significant efforts in technology development, standards, policy and regulatory activities because of the inherent complexity of such a system. Smart metering is a key component of the future vision of smart grids.
A smart meter is an advanced meter (usually an electrical meter, but could also be integrated or work together with gas, water and heat meters) that measures energy consumption in much more detail than a conventional meter. Future smart meters may also communicate that information back to the local utility for monitoring and billing purposes. A smart meter may also potentially communicate with a number of appliances and devices within future ‘smart-homes’.
Smart meters are expected to provide accurate readings automatically and at requested time intervals to the utility company, electricity distribution network or to the wider smart grid that is expected to replace the existing power distribution infrastructure. The expected frequency of such readings could be as high as every few (1-5) minutes, which raises important privacy issues regarding the availability and processing of such data (see, for example, a related story published by the Washington post, available at: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/11/experts_smart_grid_poses_priva.html). Such detailed energy usage information can lay bare the daily energy usage patterns of a household and even reveal what kind of device or appliance was in use at any given time. An example of this is given in FIG. 1, which is taken from E. L. Quinn, “Privacy and the New Energy Infrastructure”, February 2009 (available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1370731). Quinn further discusses these privacy concerns. Another useful discussion is provided in R. Stallman, “Is digital inclusion a good thing? How can we make sure it is?,” IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 48, pp. 112-118, February 2010.